


The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

by agapi42



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Missy is a literal cat, consequences of the furry kind, set between S10E10 The Eaters of Light and S10E11 World Enough and Time, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 06:35:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12205818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agapi42/pseuds/agapi42
Summary: It had been a spectacularly bad idea, all things considered. Really, really ill-considered.





	The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

**Author's Note:**

> My friend might have used the phrase "Time Kitten". I have heroically resisted.

It had been a spectacularly bad idea, all things considered. Really, really ill-considered.

Missy was coping really rather well, had appeared supremely unconcerned since they returned to the university. But then she just had to wait it out. He was the one who had to explain things to Bill and, worse, Nardole.

***

_"Your harpy insults us, Doctor!" the Chief Magician bellowed, raising his staff in anger._

_"What? No, no, she doesn't mean to do anything of the sort. Do you, Missy?"_

_"No," Missy agreed, but with a sigh and a roll of her eyes that suggested the opposite. ""Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable to magic." To lower minds, of course. One of your humans who said that, wasn't it, Doctor? Took them long enough to grasp it. All I said was that magic isn't real and that they had no understanding of the science they're utilising here. If they can't take a little constructive criticism—"_

_There was a flash. Missy vanished: in her place a small black cat hung in the air for a moment then fell five feet to the ground, managing to land on its feet despite the short notice._

_"Missy?!"_

_The cat looked up at the Doctor, its eyes startlingly blue against black fur, and_ yowled.

_"The transformation is not permanent," the Assistant Deputy Chief Magician observed._

_The Chief Magician shot her an irritated look before turning his attention back to the Doctor._

_"Leave now," he bellowed, "and return from whence you came, Doctor! After your sun sets twice, she shall be restored to you."_

_Which is what the Assistant Deputy Chief Magician was going to say, only in a less dramatic fashion. As the Chief Magician never tired of telling her, this failure to grasp the essential gravitas of the role would stymie any further progress up the hierarchy. Actually being good at directing the magical forces only got you so far._

***

"Doctor?" Bill called as she and Nardole entered the TARDIS. Nardole insisted she announce their arrival every time "now that Missy's in the TARDIS", he'd said, with a "Still extremely put out about this but no-one ever listens to muggins here, do they?" sniff.

"Why don't you do it?" Bill had said.

"He wouldn't care. I've been around a long time, Bill, I've seen things—"

"All right, all right." Bill had a fairly good idea what kind of things Nardole meant and had agreed hastily in the hopes that a) he wouldn't elaborate and b) she wouldn't think more about it.

"In here, Bill!"

"You've got a cat!" Bill exclaimed, entering the room just ahead of Nardole.

"I've got a cat," the Doctor confirmed. He was sitting in an armchair by the coffee table with said cat across his lap. It purred in time with the Doctor's steady strokes along its back. Bill hadn't spent a lot of time around cats—none of her foster parents had kept one—so maybe there wasn't a lot of competition but nevertheless, that was the most self-satisfied cat she'd ever seen. It radiated smug, stretching luxuriously under the Doctor's attentions.

Nardole frowned, set his tea tray down on the table and pushed his glasses back up his nose. "Why have you got a cat, sir?"

"One of my students is off on holiday, a long weekend, and the usual catsitter couldn't take her."

"Holiday?" Nardole echoed. "In the middle of term time? You shouldn't be encouraging that kind of thing."

"I thought it'd be good for Missy."

"Do you think that's wise, sir?" Nardole said, in the tone of one who knows the answer to his question and knows, moreover, who is going to have to clear up the resulting mess. He reached out towards the cat who hissed, showing sharp white teeth.

Nardole pulled his hand back. "Certainly got the same temperament. They should get on famously."

"Where is Missy?" Bill asked, looking around somewhat warily as if Missy might be hiding, ready to jump out and... well, she couldn't push them into a volcano, not literally, probably, but something. "Not like her to miss Sunday elevenses."

***

_That particular tradition started when Missy was still in the vault, at the Doctor's request._

_"She likes having people to tea," the Doctor had said. "Cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off and pretty little cakes with icing, that sort of thing. She had a lot of little tea parties when she was stalking me, back before I knew who she was. Mostly with dead people. It'll be a nice change for her."_

_"What do you mean, dead people?" Bill said, but the Doctor had already wandered off. She looked at Nardole, who shrugged. Before his time as well then._

_Dead before or after they sat down? Bill had little difficulty in picturing Missy sitting at a table with freshly-killed corpses, partaking of tea and cakes. Maybe they wouldn't be dead because of her but she wouldn't care that they were dead. As long as they hadn't been poisoned._

 

_Nardole insisted on providing the comestibles, to avoid such an eventuality. Missy smiled, said "Shall I be mother?" and poured the tea. She hadn't poisoned them yet, though one week she did say "Whoops! Not that one, dear," and swap her cup with the Doctor's._

_The Doctor looked between the cups._

_"Missy..." he said, warning,_ not this again.

_"Just my little joke." Missy winked and drank deeply from the cup. "But wasn't it fun stimulating those inhibited enzymes?"_

 

 _Sometimes Bill could almost forget where she was and who she was with, laughing at one of the Doctor's stories, and then Missy might tilt her head, the light might catch her eyes in a certain way, and it'd chill Bill to the bone. You could feel the weight of everything she'd seen and done. The Doctor had the same sense of age to him but it was_ different _. If the Doctor were a rock, one of the few things on Earth as old as he was, he'd be a rock warmed by the sun, secure and comfy to lean back on. Missy might be that same rock, but icy and precariously balanced: one wrong move might set off an avalanche, sweeping down to bring death and destruction. How could the Doctor look at her with such soft eyes?_

***

"Sunday elevenses?" the Doctor repeated, buying time. "Right, of course. Missy, she's, ah, sulking."

Missy bristled and meowed, loudly indignant at his choice of excuse.

"Ssh, Mis—" the Doctor bit his tongue, ran his hand along her tail in apology.

"What did you say?" Nardole said.

"Nothing."

"What's the cat's name?" Bill asked.

"It's stupid and I'm not using it."

"It can't be that bad. And we have to call her something. Unless you want to go all Time Lord and call her "The Cat"."

The Doctor racked his brains. "Misandry."

"Misandry?" Bill echoed.

"That's an interesting name," Nardole said.

The Doctor shrugged, tried to ignore Missy's high-pitched amusement. "Students."

"Right, well, we can't call her Missy too, that'd be weird." Bill frowned. "How about Andy?"

Somewhat less amused now.

The Doctor grinned. "I think that's great. Now, how about this tea?"

***

Bill caught up with the Doctor on the way to the lecture theatre.

"Is Andy coming then?"

Missy meowed her continued displeasure at the name, loud in the Doctor's ear.

"Apparently," he said, reaching up a hand to stroke her, draped across his shoulders. "You should have heard the caterwauling."

The Doctor had given in quickly. After all, the TARDIS wasn't inclined to accommodate Missy's temporary cathood and anyone (including Nardole, UNIT and others with less than glowing opinions of Missy) would have to admit that even if she had devious plans, she'd be hard pressed to implement them. Plus, his Monday morning lecture always drew an impressive crowd: there were few other scheduled sessions to clash with.

"She must really like you. Anyone'll be able to tell her owner you took great care of her. Did she do that naturally?"

"Why do you ask?" Normal Earth cats rode on people's shoulders, didn't they? He had been attracting an unusual amount of glances but he'd chalked that up to the attention furry animals normally got.

"She looks like a daemon up there."

"Daemon?" the Doctor repeated. It hadn't exactly been the Master's finest hour.

"It's from these books I read as a teenager," Bill continued. "Everyone had an animal that was like a piece of their soul and I thought that was such a great idea."

"Maybe there's something to that," he said and Missy purred deep and low.

"You're not a cat person, though. Not that you don't like cats, that's pretty obvious right now, but you're not a cat."

"What would you say I was?" the Doctor asked, genuinely curious.

Bill pulled a face. "Dunno. Some kind of bird, definitely. Maybe an owl? I took an online quiz once and it said I was a goose. I mean, a goose. I tried feeding them bread in the park once and it bit my palm. Hurt for ages."

The owl and the pussy-cat? The Doctor grinned and entered the lecture theatre humming.

***

The last notes died away. Missy, curled in the small available space on his desk, raised her head and looked at him expectantly.

"What would you like to hear next? How about..." The Doctor leaned back in his chair, picked out a few chords on his guitar, sang softly.

"Everybody wants to be a cat, because a cat's the only cat, who knows where it's at."

She gave him a dirty look. _Very funny_. Cats' faces seemed well-designed for that.

There was a knock on the door.

"Come in! Ah, Bill. Is it six already?"

"Yeah," Bill said, entering the room. "Were you serenading her? You spoil her rotten. She won't want to go home."

"It'll soon be sunset then."

"Yeah, it looks like it."

The Doctor got to his feet, leaning his guitar against the desk, and went to open the door to the antechamber. "In you go."

Missy jumped from her place in the middle of his desk to the floor, miraculously leaving every object on the cluttered surface untouched, and stalked past him with her tail held high. Cats were well-known for being graceful, of course, but it seemed to the Doctor more an ability innate to Missy, regardless of what biological system she was in control of. She might have broken things, had she so chosen, but she didn't do that anymore. He shut the door behind her with a certain amount of trepidation: he couldn't be sure what he would find when he opened it again.

"Nardole wants to know what you've been feeding her. Says the litter tray and the cat food are both untouched."

"She's a very particular cat," the Doctor non-answered. "Nardole shouldn't have bothered. Now, your latest essay..."

***

Half an hour passed quickly.

Bill paused in the doorway. "I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"

"Of course."

She hesitated, hovering. How to ask without sounding completely mad? Not that mad wasn't normal where the Doctor was concerned.

Said Doctor frowned, his hand on the door handle. "What is it, Bill?"

She hadn't been able to think of a good segue in the last half-hour; should she just blurt it out now?

"You'd tell me if there was something wrong, right? Only—"

There was a rather large thump from the antechamber, followed by a decidedly non-feline squeal of glee.

"Doctor?!" Whatever diplomatic words she'd been about to find, she'd forgotten.

"Tomorrow, Bill," he promised and hastily shut the door.

Bill stared at the wood panelling. Right. Well.

"Oh, didn't you know all Time Lords can do that?" she mimicked, heading what she hoped was Nardole-wise. "It’s not _difficult_."

***

The Doctor opened the door to the antechamber trying for stern, found Missy twirling and couldn't help but grin. Back. Restored to him, down to the mud on the hem of her skirts.

"That was an experience," she said. "You know how they got around the conservation of mass? Pocket dimensions. Incredibly neat. Might actually be interesting if they ever get a handle on the underpinning science."

She twirled up to him, eyes shining, cheeks flushed, and seized his hands. "Where are we going next?"

The Doctor frowned, running back over that last exchange with Bill. "Missy, I—"

Her face fell. "Oh."

She tried to pull away but he held on tightly, struck by inspiration.

"No, Missy, listen to me. We're not going to keep sneaking off; we're going to do this properly. We'll find a distress signal, some problem for you to solve. Bill and Nardole can be your companions. Show them how brilliant you are. I know how much you like showing off."

She let out a small huff of amusement. "Pot and kettle, love."

"Prove to me that you can help people, save them, tiny unimportant people with real lives and hopes and fears and wishes."

"Take the burden of the universe from your weary shoulders?" Missy closed her eyes and let out a long breath. Opened them and addressed his left ear. "You'll never convince them to play along."

"I will," he vowed.

Her gaze flicked to his. Held it. "And then?"

He ran his hands up her arms, splayed his fingers across her shoulder blades.

"The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea," he began, "in a beautiful pea green boat. They took some honey, and plenty of money, wrapped up in a five pound note."

Missy chuckled. “Dear old Eddie.” She stepped closer, sliding her arms round his waist and tilted her face to his.

"The Owl looked up to the stars above and sang to a small guitar, 'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love, what a beautiful Pussy you are, you are, you are!'"

He shuddered at the sudden touch of Missy's hand against the back of his neck as she pulled him down into a thorough kiss.

"'What a beautiful Pussy you are,'" he whispered against her mouth.

She smiled and pulled back slightly, picked some cat hair off his jacket. "They dined on mince and slices of quince, which they ate with a runcible spoon."

"You missed out the second verse. And half the third."

"Unnecessary. And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon." She swayed, stepped, tugged the Doctor with her. He joined her in the last line.

"They danced by the light of the moon."


End file.
